The facts are simple. As human females get older, they undergo menopause, a transition that marks the passage from being able to bear children to not. Key among the changes of this time is a drop in hormone levels, particularly estrogen. Research in the 1950s and 1960s popularized and made widespread the taking of estrogen supplements for birth control among fertile women (“The Pill,” a different grand experiment on women that is another topic for another day). Pharmaceutical companies had a vested interest in expanding the lucrative market for The Pill beyond young, fertile women; older, infertile women were the only untapped market segment available. As Dr. Wilson wrote in Feminine Forever, “Breasts and genital organs will not shrivel. Such women will be much more pleasant to live with and will not
become dull and unattractive.” Like a, er, herd of cows, older women stampeded and lined up to take The Pill. Thus was HRT, er, born.
What happened next was as much about money as medicine. By 1975 an estrogen-based drug called Premarin had become Wyeth’s premier product, the fifth most popular prescription drug in the US. In 1980 Weyth’s sales soared again after a major marketing push by the company to promote its hormone mix for the prevention of osteoporosis.
In 1990 Wyeth, by then the leading maker of estrogen, went before the FDA with a request
to label the drug as protective against heart disease.
Then the bubble burst. Studies began to pile up that heart attacks, stroke, breast cancer and even Altzheimer’s dementia were linked to HRT. The evidence against HRT became so damning that the National Institutes of Health even halted a major HRT study early last year. Premarin is now a hot topic among those with hot flashes.
So now we’re in the expose book-writing stage of the process as the release of Barbara Seaman’s new book, The Greatest Experiment Ever Performed on Women, takes on the estrogen industry. As public sentiment about HRT shifts, can lawyers be far behind?